Red Tigress

by Amélie Wen Zhao

  A broken warrior.

  Somehow, those words hurt more than the thought of dying.

  “Call off the Bregonian Navy,” Kerlan ordered, and he reached back and gripped a fistful of Linn’s hair, jerking her head up and baring her throat. “Or, would you prefer to see her pretty face smashed bloody on the rocks below?”

  Ana’s expression tightened. She gave another snarl but remained where she was.

  “What are you waiting for, Blood Witch?” Kerlan said. There was a mad glint to his eyes. “The choice is yours. Call off the Navy, or she dies. I won’t ask again.”

  Linn’s head spun. In the span of a single night, Kerlan had murdered nearly half the entire leadership of Bregon, and he would continue to take the kingdom for Morganya if he wasn’t stopped.

  He had to be stopped.

  She dangled at the edge of the drop. She imagined the sea roiling below, waves clawing at the cliffs and receding over sharp rocks. Once, a long time ago—a lifetime ago—she might have reveled at the sight, with the winds at her back and her chi strapped to her arms.

  Now, she could only look down, watching her arm hang loose beneath her, blood running in rivulets down her skin.

  A wingless bird.

  Tears blurred her vision. If she fell now, she wouldn’t survive. She could barely move with her wound, and the smallest shift of her arm felt as though she were being pricked with a thousand hot needles. She didn’t know if she had the strength to even summon her Affinity.

  She took in the scene around Godhallem. There were bodies and blood everywhere, but the Affinites she and Kaïs had rescued remained standing. Ana, Ramson, and Kaïs were alive. And the Bregonian Navy was on their way.

  They were so, so close.

  Ana was shouting something at Kerlan, her face twisted in fury and anguish, but Linn was no longer listening. A faint wind blew in from the outside. Linn looked to the sky. The storm had broken; the stars were out, the silver of their light tinting the black expanse of night. She closed her eyes briefly, thinking of how her mother had said once that no matter where one was in the world, they looked at the same moon and stars.

  Linn drew a breath. She knew what she had to do.

  “Kill him,” she said, her voice a wisp of air. And then, stronger: “Kill him!”

  Kerlan’s blow came out of nowhere. It left her reeling.

  “Shut up,” he roared, and then he hit her again. Linn tasted blood. “You think I’ve done all I can do to you? I can break you over and over again, an infinite number of times for my own pleasure.”

  His voice, the pain, they fell away from her. Tears warmed her cheeks, but Linn focused on the brush of wind against her face, the susurrus of the ocean below that seemed to open its arms to her, wrapping around her like a mother’s embrace.

  My daughter, they whispered. Choose…to be brave.

  Linn reached deep into the hollow cave of her chest, and found the last of her voice there, still fighting. The last drops of water in an emptying river. “Ana,” she gasped. “Kaïs.” Louder. She spoke so that her voice echoed in the halls, high and thin, but powerful nevertheless. “Kill him and end it. I’d rather die than let him live.”

  Ana’s eyes shimmered behind her tears. Kaïs’s eyes were clouds of grief as he raised his swords.

  Linn held Kaïs’s gaze and nodded. One life, in exchange for thousands of others, was a small price to pay. She would use her life to buy safety for those she loved. For in her final moments, it wasn’t hate or anger that filled Linn’s thoughts.

  It was love.

  Love, in Ama-ka’s midnight-black eyes, in Enn’s laughter that echoed between vast, empty mountains, in the gift of a life she had been given, however brief.

  Linn only wished she had just a little more time.

  But she would face death as a warrior, as a windsailer. She would be brave.

  Linn turned to Alaric Kerlan.

  For a moment, they stared at each other, Linn’s eyes black steel, Kerlan’s face contorting with the wild wrath of a man condemned.

  And then the fury in his expression ebbed. “All right,” he said calmly. “Then die.”

  And he shoved her off the edge.

  Kaïs didn’t even stop to think.

  When he saw Linn disappear over the ledge, his mind turned blank, and his body moved by some primal instinct.

  He flung his swords aside and took off at a sprint.

  Past the bodies. The dais. The throne.

  Two, three steps.

  The edge of Godhallem drew near.

  Kaïs leapt, and for a moment he was airborne with nothing but the rain and the wind and the ocean unfurling beneath him.

  Then gravity took over, and he dove after Linn.

  As Ana’s scream reverberated through the hall, Ramson was on his feet, running, blade drawn. Out of all the people whom Kerlan had hurt and all the twisted things the man had done in the past, it was what he had done to Linn that Ramson could not forgive.

  He would never forget the sight of the girl, sitting at the edge of life and death, her face a mask of defiance.

  Nor the way she had looked at him the night they had first met in Novo Mynsk, her head tilted away from him like a frightened animal, her liquid black eyes betraying the faintest wisp of hope within her.

  Ramson had seen his former master deliver death too many times to count, and he’d always thought that the moments before revealed the true character of a person. He’d witnessed mothers shielding their children with their own bodies before Kerlan cut them down; he’d watched Affinites die with their heads held high. Throughout all of it, Alaric Kerlan had always been less man than monster.

  But now, on the precipice of defeat, Alaric Kerlan looked no more than a frightened child. With no henchmen to come to his rescue and no bindings holding his opponent back, he cowered against the wall.

  Ramson plunged his dagger into his old master’s chest.

  It was a surprisingly smooth stroke, the feeling akin to gutting a pig. Kerlan put up no resistance. His screech stopped, his mouth going slack, and with an exhale, he slumped against Ramson. A puddle of yellow had formed around his shoes.

  Alaric Kerlan, the greatest criminal mastermind of the Cyrilian Empire, had died pissing himself.

  It was only then that Ramson let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. With a violent lunge, he pulled himself away from the body of Alaric Kerlan, slumping against the wall of Godhallem, right next to where it ended and open air and cliff began.

  Behind him was a scene of massacre, with over two-thirds of the Three Courts slaughtered. The survivors had either fled the scene or cowered in the corners, too stunned to move.

  The storm had passed. The rain had cleared and the sky had turned bright with the silver glow of the moon. That was when Ramson saw them. Silhouetted against the horizon were the outlines of hundreds of ships, small at first, but then growing larger, their sails blooming against the sky.

  Kerlan’s fleet.

  They approached fast, and Ramson began to make out the shapes on their sails: Morganya’s sigil of the Deys’krug and the crown.

  Desperately, Ramson searched the shorelines below for movement, for a sign—any sign—that the Bregonian Navy had launched.

  And then he heard it.

  Somewhere, between the whistle of wind and crash of waves against the cliffs below, Ramson thought he heard music. A strange, rhythmic, and repetitive melody that was almost soothing.

  It sounded like…bells.

  And as Ramson watched, the night lit up with a hundred, a thousand flames. They soared into the air, arcing in a perfect curve, before descending in a shower of fire toward the enemy ships.

  Arrows. War bells, from…

  The first Bregonian Navy warship appeared nearly right beneath the cliffs wh
ere he stood. Even high up, he could see the tips of flaming arrows being lit, the shape of a bell clocking back and forth as it rang out the commands for war.

  Flamed arrows shot into the sky, and under their light, the colors of the ships’ flags rippled bright: navy-blue sails, flashing the gold of a roaring, triumphant Bregonian seadragon.

  The Bregonian Navy was here.

  Ramson sank to his knees.

  The first Cyrilian ship went up in flames, and the rest followed suit. Arrows peppered the sky, arcing like comets, carving blazing paths across the night, finding more and more targets.

  And still, Bregonian warships kept coming, more and more of them. Their arrows lit the sky so bright that it looked like day.

  In the distance, Morganya’s fleet burned, the light from their fires reflected in the lingering clouds, lighting the sea and the sky a triumphant, violent crown of corals and golds.

  At first, there was nothing but the shriek of wind, pummeling her like fists and threatening to tear her apart as she plummeted. In the distance, Linn heard the splash of waves.

  And then, in the darkness of her mind she felt hands wrap around her.

  A familiar presence: liquid silver, cold-blooded hunter, fierce warrior in one.

  “Look at me.” His deep voice was in her ear. They were spinning, tumbling, free-falling. Look at me. He’d said those exact words to her, back at the prison. It had been her and this soldier and the vast emptiness of night all around them.

  She sensed his Affinity on hers, yet instead of clamping down, he pulled hers up. Out of the haze of fear clouding her mind, up and up, until she opened her eyes to the sight of a silvering sky and darting waves below her.

  “Look at me,” he commanded again, and she did. There was nothing but firm resolution in his eyes. “Now, fly.”

  With his steady grip on her, Linn closed her eyes.

  And called on her winds.

  The day broke clear and blue, the air golden with the early-morning sun. In the distance, the sea lapped at the sky, always touching yet never meeting. Ana strolled through the courtyard of the Blue Fort, her white linen shirt tucked into navy breeches and a Bregonian blue cloak.

  She walked slowly, sometimes pausing to clutch her side. She felt hollow; the world had not been quite right since the Battle of Godhallem three days ago.

  Since her Affinity had been siphoned.

  She’d spent one day in the medical wing burning with fever, her world an alternating swirl of searing red and churning black, roiling with nightmares. When she’d woken again, everything had become a little duller. The colors, the sounds, the scents…she experienced it all as though from behind a tinted glass window.

  The healers hadn’t been able to determine anything wrong with her physically, and had attributed the symptoms to an adjustment period after losing her Affinity.

  It still felt…wrong. Sometime throughout the sleepless nights, as she’d tried to reach out in her dark room for a trace, a hint, of her power, she’d realized that this was what she had always wanted. Since her Affinity had manifested, she’d wanted it gone. How many lonely days had she spent before the mirror of her chambers back at the Salskoff Palace, scratching until her arms were covered in trails of red, hoping to dig it out of her? How many nights had she woken to nightmares and tear-soaked pillows, sobbing for her father?

  And yet…she had seen, repeatedly, evidence that her Affinity could be used for good. That, all along, Luka had been right: it wasn’t her Affinity, but how she wielded her power, that defined her. She had harmed, she had murdered—but she had also fought against the wicked and the cruel of this world, had learned to heal and strengthen. Kaïs had taught her that her Affinity was a double-edged sword, and he’d been right.

  She had just realized it too late.

  Ana paused to lean against the pillar of a stone archway. She forced her thoughts to the present, grounding herself in the slow hum of activity as the Blue Fort began to wake all around her.

  Though the Bregonian Navy had decimated Morganya and Kerlan’s forces, Sapphire Port had been hit hard, its quays destroyed, parts of the town reduced to rubble. Bregon had pulled together its resources to begin reconstruction of their capital.

  The Blue Fort had miraculously survived unscathed. In part, it was due to the resilience of its structure, built atop cliffs with impenetrable defenses. King Darias had locked up the research dungeons and was getting to the bottom of all those involved in the siphon scheme. Thus far, they had discovered that of the three leading scholars involved in the research, two had died—including Tarschon—and one, a so-called Scholar Ardonn, had not been found.

  Sorsha, too, was still missing.

  The courtyards were relatively empty as Ana made her way toward Godhallem, the alder trees still fresh with the scent of rain. A few walkways over, by the small, man-made streams that tinkled through the courtyards, two Affinites sat enjoying the early morning peace. She recognized them; they belonged to the group Linn had rescued from the dungeons and had fought valiantly at the Battle of Godhallem. Bathed and fed and dressed in fresh clothes, they looked young, almost like children. One drew water from the streams in a curling ribbon and flicked droplets at his friend, who summoned twigs and leaves from nearby trees and twisted them into beautiful figurines.

  The sight brought an ache to Ana’s throat, and she was reminded of a memory once upon a time, when she’d looked upon a small girl sitting in the dead of winter, blowing life into a flower in a snow-covered field. She was reminded, too, of the world she fought for, the one she sought to build after this was all over.

  Smiling faintly to herself, Ana turned down the open-air arches that led to the side entrances.

  Guards saluted her as she passed by. Most of the Three Courts, Ana had learned, had attributed the survival of their government to her and her allies. At the entrance of Godhallem, she found herself face to face with Captain Ronnoc of the King’s Guard. He gave her a deep bow.

  Ana inclined her head and stepped into the great halls of Godhallem.

  It was impossible not to think of what had happened here, three days earlier. With the bodies removed and the rubble cleared, Godhallem looked restored to some semblance of its former self.

  She came to a stop before the dais.

  Sunlight filtered in through the back of Godhallem. It swept gold across the various courtiers who were already seated at their respective courts. It pooled at the throne on top of the dais, outlining the figure sitting there.

  King Darias sat straight, his crown glinting as he turned his attention from several courtiers to Ana.

  In just three days, King Darias seemed to have become a different person. Gone was the child with the flushed cheeks and fever-wet eyes and vacant stare. He sat straight and calm, his hair combed back neatly, dressed in a tailored Bregonian royal uniform. The crown rested on his head, its bronze band cut in the shape of waves and woven through with searock so that it glittered like water and sunlight as it moved. His gaze was bright and intelligent, and Ana suddenly saw a cunning, resourceful boy who had done everything he could to survive the complex politics of a corrupt kingdom. Within days, he’d arrested those involved in his drugging, a scheme that Admiral Farrald and Sorsha had upheld for years. The former Captain Ronnoc had been promoted to Commander of the Royal Guard, tasked with reexamining his personnel and rooting out those who had been loyal to Sorsha Farrald’s orders to the detriment of the King.

  King Darias’s eyes turned to Ana, and this time, they were the sharp gray of swordmetal. He stood and descended the steps, crossing over the narrow square of water separating his dais from the rest of the hall. Ana inclined her head, but the next moment, his hands were at her elbows. “There is no need for that between friends,” King Darias said. They stood almost at the same height, and his gaze hovered over her face. Concern creased his brows. “Are you feeli
ng better?”

  The words tightened a grasp of panic around her. She’d made sure to layer creams over the dark circles beneath her eyes and brush powders over her face to hide the new pallor to her skin, the sharpness to her cheeks.

  “I’m fine,” she said. The words rang hollow to her own ears.

  King Darias looked at her with knowing eyes, but he didn’t press for more. “We take it day by day.”

  Ana nodded.

  “Now,” he said, letting her go and stepping back, “we get on with the formalities. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” She watched as he returned to his throne. At once, a hush fell all around the hall as the remaining members of the Three Courts turned their attention to their king. The Sky and Earth Courts sat in their respective seats, and standing in rows near the entrance, directly facing the throne, soldiers stood in attendance, dressed in navy-blue livery and bearing the bronze seadragon sigil of the Sea Court.

  Commander Ronnoc and several members of the King’s Guard stood on either side of the throne, and Ana couldn’t help but look at the empty space in front of the dais, which had been occupied by Admiral Farrald just days ago. On either side of the hall, there were unfilled seats, a reminder of the loss that Bregon had taken. But as King Darias stood atop his dais and looked over his Three Courts, hope seemed to fill the room like winds at a ship’s sails.

  “Three Courts of Bregon,” King Darias began. “We have fought and won against foreign invasion and treason within our very own Courts. Today, I am glad to address you as your king.”

  A thundering round of applause rose from the Three Courts.

  “As you well know, our victory was not easy, and it certainly would not have been possible without certain people.” King Darias nodded at Ana. “The Red Tigress of Cyrilia and her allies have been instrumental to saving Bregon. On behalf of my Three Courts and the entire Kingdom of Bregon, I thank you, Anastacya Mikhailov, Red Tigress, for fighting on our side.”